


No Strings Attached

by JediDryad



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types
Genre: AU probably, Awkward First Times, Defense Mechanisms, F/M, From competitors to colleagues, Happy Ending, Healing from trauma, Mara gets to have a nice thing, yes that's a double entendre
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2019-12-27
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:53:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21989815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JediDryad/pseuds/JediDryad
Summary: Mara and Aves had never clicked well as senior executives, but she felt like he had somehow only become more infuriating as time went on.Aves couldn’t put his finger on what exactly got to him about Jade, but something about her chafed and left him raw.With a tiny ship on a mission full of problems, it was only a matter of time before it all came to a head….When I wrote this a long time ago, my own insecurities told me no one would buy the premise. More levelheaded folks have convinced me otherwise and I thank them for it.
Relationships: Mara Jade/Aves, Mara Jade/Luke Skywalker
Comments: 11
Kudos: 12





	No Strings Attached

The door slid shut leaving the two of them glaring in stony silence in the small bunk-room-turned-storage-unit. Then the import of what had just happened hit them.

“Well that was embarrassing,” Mara muttered.

“Yeah,” Aves responded glancing at his boots, “Chin made the right call.”  
Mara nodded and pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead for a minute, self chastising.

Chin was the only one with enough prestige to lock his superiors in a closet for behaving badly but he probably wasn't the only one fed up with them. Mara and Aves had never really seen eye-to-eye, but he had somehow only become more infuriating as time went on. Her new role with the Smugglers’ Alliance just gave them something else to clash about.

Mara was certain Karrde knew about their regular disputes, but so far he hadn’t seen fit to intervene. She could only assume it was because the two of them had managed to stay professional around others.

But this trip made that impossible.

The ship was too tiny; the crew was too numerous. Everywhere Mara turned, there was Aves, questioning her decisions and snapping at her orders. Never one to put up with being needled, she’d snapped back over and over again until Chin had taken them each by the arm and shut them in this tiny, crate-filled cabin telling them to not come out until they could be civil with one another.

It was beyond humiliating to have lost control enough that Chin, of all beings, decided they needed a time out.

Mara crossed her arms across her chest defensively and stared down the man who was a mere two feet away from her.

“What is your problem with me anyway?” she asked Aves.

“My problem with you?” he snapped, “what about you? You're always taking over, fighting with me.”

“What? I let you do your thing most of the time. I only fight you when you're wrong.”

Aves snorted, “Apparently I'm wrong a lot.”

She stepped towards him and jabbed a finger at his chest, “You question and doubt me at every turn. You have absolutely no respect for my leadership.”

“I have what?” Aves looked shocked.

“You have no respect for me,” Mara snapped.

He shook his head in disbelief.

“You have no respect for me!”

He shoved her fingers away and advanced on her.

“Everything about you. Your walk, your nose in the air, your noblesse kriffin' oblige when you think it might do you some good. 

You see me as less than the dirt beneath your precious little feet.”

Stung, Mara drew herself up, “Well if it makes you so angry, maybe it's true.”

Eyes blazing, Aves backed her up against the closest pile of boxes.

“You arrogant little upstart.” He snapped, punctuating each word with a slap on the boxes behind her head.

“You sweep in here, and just expect all of us to do things your way, like we’re a bunch of idiots. You’re what, 25? What do you know anyway?”

She snorted and opened her mouth, but he got there first.

“I've got more experience and it's high time you respected that.”

Before he registered what was happening, Aves found his chin snapped up in the air and his arm twisted behind his back,

“I have plenty of experience.” Mara intoned from behind him.

She dropped his arm and stepped back.

Aves worked at his jaw, fuming at himself. Right, attempting to intimidate Jade was a terrible idea. He was letting her get to him again,

He couldn’t put his finger on exactly why she managed to get under his skin so efficiently. It could have been the way she’d swept into the organization and slid right into Karrde’s right hand despite the tangled disaster that seemed to come in her wake. It wasn’t that he’d wanted her position or that he didn’t think she could handle it. She obviously could. And any messes had been more than balanced out by the new business and better deals her skills had brought. Still, something about her chafed and left him raw.

“So, we’re competitors,” she spoke aloud, doing some analysis of her own. “We have equal standing but we each think we’re better than the other, and we have no respect for each other.”

“That doesn’t sound right.” Aves murmured.

Mara looked at him, measuring. She folded her arms across her chest.

“Y’know, my last boss would do just what Chin’s done, but he’d expect only one of us to come out.” she shrugged as a look of horror crossed Aves’ face, “he’d probably stick around to watch too.”

Aves was speechless

“He was a sicko,” Mara observed into the shocked silence.

“Is that what you want us to do: fight to the death? He was unexpectedly subdued. Mentions of the late unlamented Emperor Palpatine had that effect on people.

“No,” Mara’s emotions caught up with themselves and she sighed. She uncrossed her arms and shrugged a bit helplessly, “I just… my only experience with dealing with this stuff involves getting physical. Usually when you and I are on a mission together, I spend hours in the workout room beating a defenceless bag of sand with your holo on it.”

Aves chuckled ruefully.

“I've punched a lot of walls myself.”

She drew a circle in the air around her head, “Here's the real thing if you want to take a shot.”

“Don't tempt me, Jade,” he muttered stretching the kink out of the arm she’d pinned.

The silence hung heavy between them.

“Well, we've got to figure this out somehow.” she said, turning away to stare out at the few stars visible in the tiny row of portholes stars. She was at a loss.

“Karrde's not going to put up with this sort of thing from us for long.”

Karrde would want them to figure out a way to be a better team. He wouldn't want them to come to blows. He would expect more civility from his crew, especially his senior crew.

Mara knew teamwork wasn’t really her thing. She was used to giving orders and taking orders: clear chains of command, and firm divisions of responsibilities. She’d never had colleagues, not really. Palpatine had always been ready to pit his agents against one another. Coming out on top had been a matter of life and death. 

But that’s not what this was supposed to be. Karrde was not Palpatine. They were not competing for his favour, and, as Karrde had reminded her more than once, no one was going to be executed for failure or honest mistakes. 

She’d done it again. She’d made the stakes higher for herself than they actually were. Aves wasn’t a threat to her. He was just… obnoxious, and she couldn’t figure out why she wanted to slap the smug look off his face on a regular basis. There was something in his eyes that made her shoulders rise up somewhere around her ears.

She heard him suck in a breath.

“I respect you.” he finally said quietly into the silence.

She looked back over her shoulder at him, eyebrows raised.

“I didn't at first,” the older man continued, “I thought you were too secretive. I didn't trust you and figured you'd betray Karrde at the first opportunity.”

“Well, I didn't” Mara interjected heatedly, hands coming up as she settled instinctively into a combat stance.

“No, you didn't.” he said, “And I know you won't. You're loyal.”

She nodded and relaxed a little.

“You're still arrogant though.”

She nodded again.

“And you still seem like an upstart to me.”

“I suppose I seem like one,” she admitted.

He smiled ruefully.

“And that drives me crazy, because I'm supposed to be the arrogant upstart”

“Can you be an upstart after 40?” she asked, mock innocently.

He snapped up the bait, and stormed back towards her.

“I'm 38 dammit!” he snarled as he backed her against the wall again.

Mara held his gaze as he pressed against her. She slowly realized his warmth was seeping into her through her clothes. He was breathing heavily and that made her heart pound in her ears. 

She pushed back a sudden desire to touch him, to see if she could make him breathe harder than he already was.

Shock arched through her as she realized what she’d been considering.

This made the problem bigger than she’d imagined.

“Shavit,” he muttered backing off. His face flushed red, and not from anger this time.

They stood there, shaken until Aves turned away.

Mara pushed aside her sudden uncomfortable and highly unprofessional impulses - she’d ignored those before - and took a deep breath.

His admission required one in return if they were going to ever work together, and working together was more important than whatever else was going on.

“I respect you too,” she admitted.

He turned back to face her, jaw dropped, “Uh, Jade. All evidence is to the contrary.”

Mara shrugged. “Evidence isn't always evidence with me. It was part of my training to put people on edge, make them uncomfortable.”

She shoved her hands in her pockets and looked down shamefully,

“So they'd reveal things about themselves that they didn't intend to.”

She looked up at him again and saw rightful anger flash across his face. He was going to need more than that admission.

“You're good at what you do, Aves. Very good. I admire your tactical skills and weapons work. You can out do me with a carbine easily. You have a short fuse, and are too easily baited, but I'm glad we're on the same side.”

To say Aves was taken aback by her sudden shift from antagonism to complimentary analysis, would be an understatement, but he recovered quickly and picked up on her final words.

“We are on the same side, y’know,” he reminded her firmly, “Maybe stop treating me like some enemy you need to set on edge and interrogate?”

“It's a habit,” she replied heavily, “I'll work on it, but I can't make any promises. You make it too easy.”

His gaze grew stormy again but he kept it under control.

“Don’t expect us to be friends” he said.

“I don’t,” Mara replied as though it were a foregone conclusion.

Aves found that oddly unsatisfactory.

“Of course not,” he continued, uncertain where he was headed but unable to escape the notion that there was somewhere to go here, “there's too much...something...between us.” he fumbled the words then looked up at her from under his eyelids with an odd intensity.

The nerf in the after-burners look came into Mara's eyes again. She knew what he was talking about and couldn't figure out what to do with her pounding heart, the tingling as she met his gaze and the other unmistakable symptoms of arousal she was experiencing. Now that she'd figured out why he bugged her, she found it more overwhelming than she expected.

Her go to response was a disdainful rejection followed by a quick escape before she could think too much about the alternatives, but the last thing their working relationship needed right down was insincere disdain, and there was no real escape from this bunkroom.

So now she was stuck thinking about the alternatives.

She looked him up and down, made a point of really looking. While he was a few years older that she was, Aves was still in good shape. Clearly all that wall punching had served him well. There was no obvious sign of grey in his blond hair and only a few lines around his eyes and mouth. She let her gaze rest on his lips, wondering.

Kriff, she was actually thinking about it. 

She closed her eyes, trying to shut out the idea. Sure, she couldn't deny she'd found him attractive for a while, if she stopped to think about it, but the attraction wasn't a good enough reason to destroy the life she'd fought so hard for.

Aves seemed to be holding his breath. 

“There's no gym on this kriffing boat,” she finally mumbled, crossing her arms in front of herself and looking at the labels on the boxes to her right.

“No,” he replied with all too deep an understanding of her meaning, “there isn't.”

The silence stretched awkwardly between them in the much too small space.

Finally Aves let out a long sigh and shrugged slightly to himself.

“We could try it.” he offered very quietly.

Mara looked at him, a dangerous expression on her face.

“Try what” she said with a decided lack of question in her tone.

Aves wanted to pretend he hadn't said anything just like Mara was pretending she didn't know exactly what he was talking about, but he had more nerve than that.

“We could try working this out physically.”

“You wanna do what?!” Mara almost shrieked. The intensity of her reaction surprised both of them. She'd known this conversation was going to happen. That didn't mean she was prepared. Way out of her depth, she struggled for some emotion other than sheer panic.

It was one thing for her to admit to herself that she was attracted to the man in front of her. It was another thing entirely for him to figure it out, reciprocate and suggest they actually do something about it. 

… and that she would realize she kind of wanted to.

She was supposed to be better than this.

Aves’ sheepish expression was slightly calming.

“Beats tearing each other limb from limb.”

“Sure, then you can tell everyone you bedded the arrogant upstart?” She snapped, absolutely no pretence of civility left.. 

She felt trapped and exposed, realized she was pacing back and forth in the tiny space, fingernails digging into her palms.

Aves was offended.

“I don't kiss and tell, ” he said firmly, “no one would ever hear about it from me.”

Mara opened her mouth, exhortations of distrust on the tip of her tongue - and then closed it again. 

He meant it. He really meant it. Something in her relaxed. Once again, she’d forgotten that the old rules didn’t apply to her anymore. Freedom was a hard thing to assimilate.

Aves chuckled, “Speechless, Jade?”

She took a step back and found herself against the wall again. The instinctive rush of panic was muted by the new friendliness in his eyes. 

“I don't want to be with you,” Mara said, uncertain if that was something she was actually concerned about in this moment or if she was just struggling to appropriately categorize what she was considering doing. 

She had no interest in admitting that she had no idea.

Aves shook his head reassuringly.

“Of course not,” he said, “you'll want someone younger than me, and my shot at love died a long time ago.”

The wave of sadness that crossed his face resonated, and she wondered if this feeling of exile from normalcy that she clearly shared with most smugglers was why Karrde’s organization felt safe.

He brightened up quickly, and flashed a cocky grin.

“No strings attached,”

“No strings attached?” she repeated cautiously.

He nodded, “No expectations for the future. Just this trip. We work off the aggression and tension. Like exercise. When we land on Coruscant, it's over. Never happened.”

She looked at him skeptically, but the skepticism, she realized, was all about her. Could she do this? She'd never thought of sex as a casual thing, very much the opposite in fact. It was part of why she was suddenly feeling like the grav generators had shorted out. There was very little for her to take hold of.

Sex had never been on the table. It just hadn’t been an option at all.

There had been plans, she recalled briefly, and she suppressed a shudder at how normal and awful that managed to sound all at once as she heard it through the filters of both of her lives.

But, as she’d insisted to herself many times, she was just Mara now. The thing that had never been her choice was now entirely up to her. She looked him up and down again. The offer had an appeal. 

“I promise you'll have a good time,” he said, a veneer of playful humour over an unmistakably earnest tone.

A tiny smile passed across her lips and he took it as an invitation to get a bit closer to her again. She felt herself go warm at his approach, and didn't fight it.

They were much the same in that moment, two frustrated people, just looking for release. And she realized that she could trust him to keep his word. No triumphant conquest, no spreading the story around. A good time with no strings attached.

She found herself grinning. At this point in her life, she decided, a promise of a good time was a damn good offer.

“You promise?” She asked, eyes flashing as she stopped fighting the heat building inside her.

He nodded, his face inches away.

“Guaranteed” he breathed as he fitted his mouth to hers.

She wasn't sure what to expect from the kiss, considering she'd been offering to beat this man within an inch of his life just minutes earlier, but she was relieved and excited to find herself enjoying the feel of his lips on hers and then his tongue exploring her mouth. Aves definitely seemed determined to make good on his promise of a good time and she felt herself melt into him as he slid his hands down the back of her flightsuit.

He lifted her up by the back of her legs and set her on a nearby pil of boxes so they were matched in height. Mara instinctively wrapped her legs around his hips and continued the long kiss, her fingers tangling in his hair. She felt him unzip the front of her flight suit to reveal her tight black sculpted undershirt.  
Jade, he murmured nonsensically in her ear as he dipped his head to follow with his lips and hands, the path the zipper had taken. Mara let a tiny moan escape as she felt his hot breath through her shirt, and fervently wished the shirt wasn't in the way. She didn't want anything in the way. She removed her hands from his hair and awkwardly tugged at the zipper to his flightsuit.

He looked up at her and shook his head slightly.

“Can't just relax, huh?”

She shook her head, and he smiled as she slid off the boxes and down his body to tug his zipper down as well. She ran her hands appreciatively over the bare skin she found under his flight suit, and planted a line of fevered kisses on his collarbone and neck. She felt the speed of his pulse and opened her eyes.

That's where the tension had come from alright.

He met her knowing gaze and, placing a supporting hand on the back of her head, crushed her mouth under his. The gentle seduction gave way to a frenzy as they raced to remove articles of clothing piece for piece: a boot here, an undershirt there. Aves lifted Mara back up onto the stack of boxes to remove her pants as she pushed his flight suit down around his ankles with her toes.

He pulled her sculpt shirt over her head as he tugged her over to the bunk in the corner.

“not a lot of room,” she mumbled against his mouth as they fell onto the single mattress together.

“We'll make it work,” he said breathlessly. He pulled back from her lips and turned his attention to her now uncovered breasts. She arched against his hands and then his lips as he worked her nipples to attention.

“Feel good?” he whispered.

All she could manage was an impassioned whimper.

He seemed to hesitate for a moment before returning his attention to her body.

Mara gasped and gripped the mattress.

She'd planned on matching him, touch for touch, but the sensations he was triggering throughout her body made that sort of action impossible. Her coordination was shot. All she could do was writhe against his caresses and fight against the guttural moans escaping her.

He continued bathing her nipples with his tongue, but let his fingers drift down the planes of her stomach to the underwear she was still wearing. He hooked a finger through it and dragged the garment gently down her legs before slipping his finger into the small mound of ruddy curls he'd uncovered.

Mara’s breathing hitched as his thumb brushed across her clit.

She yelped as he slid a finger inside her.

“You're wet,” he observed, “you must like this too.”

“Better use for your hands than bashing walls, she breathed.”

He chuckled and then slipped his finger out from inside her and into his mouth. Mara couldn't keep surprise from registering on her face. Aves looked at her suspiciously but didn't say anything. He just ran his hands across her stomach again before shifting backwards and removing his shorts.

When he was finally naked, he stretched out next to her and kissed her again, guiding her hand downwards. She hesitated only slightly, but long enough for him to pull her up to a seated position.

“You haven't done this before have you?,” he said, mildly accusatory.

The clouds of passion cleared from her eyes and mind. She sighed and shook her head.

“You didn't want me to know?”

“Not particularly,” she answered, looking away. She could feel a blush come to her cheeks that had nothing to do with the feel of his hand on her thigh.

His long exhalation was tinged with a grumble. Somehow, he'd managed to stumble across the one thing he had more experience with than she did. He should have been pleased. Instead he was just confused and more than a little agitated. He pulled the only blanket around her shoulders and across his lap, ignoring the desire he couldn't seem to fully suppress.

When he ran a bewildered hand through his hair, he revealed that it was thinning slightly at the temples.

“How? He started and let out a breath. “How did you manage to get this far along without having sex with someone, somewhere, sometime? You're not that young.”

She shrugged, embarrassed and really wishing he'd not make a big deal about this.

“It wasn’t an option,” she said, hoping the edge in her voice would prevent him from inquiring further, “Besides, it wasn’t as though there was anyone around I actually wanted to sleep with.”

He raised his eyebrows and she rolled her eyes.

“It's true. It's not like my life was full of sexy pilots. It was mostly brittle courtiers and ancient Moffs.”

He smiled.

“You'd avoid them too,” she said sharply.

He nodded. She was right.

“And then, after Palpatine was dead and I was trying to rebuild, it was just a bad idea to let someone get this close. You saw what I was like before...”

She trailed off. She was speaking before thinking, and too many thoughts were cluttering into her mind at once.

“Before our run in with Skywalker and our relationship with the New Republic,” he finished for her.

She turned away again.

“Yes, I had enough going on without trying to manage sex on top of all of it. I put it out of my mind...until recently apparently.”

She sounded annoyed with herself.

He nodded, uncertain what the right thing to do here was, and painfully aware of how much he wanted her right then.

She’d made up her mind though.

She turned back toward him and her gaze darkened, smouldering slightly.

“Besides, you promised me a good time. It seemed like a good offer. You plan to go back on your word?”

The challenge in her voice made his decision for him.

“Not a chance,” he declared, “just a slight change in the approach. Lay down.”

She hesitated.

“Jade, please defer to my experience here.” he said, his voice playfully smug, a twinkle of satisfaction in his eyes as he slid the blanket off of both of them.

Mara rolled her eyes but did as she was told. Her expectant look dared him to make it worth her while.

He stretched out next to her and kissed her again. This time the kiss was gentle but firm, not as pushy, more open. Mara’s vulnerability in this moment was impressive. Aves wanted her to know he understood the risk she was taking, and he wouldn’t betray her trust.

He caressed her tongue with his and felt her respond again to his touches with sharply drawn breaths and tiny strangled whimpers.

This was not about posturing and power struggle, just pleasure.

When he was certain she was breathless, he slid down her body again, and found her clit, this time with his tongue. With lips and hands and tongue, he stroked her to a keening peak and caressed her as she shuddered around him before sliding gently inside her and finding his own release.

They laid still for awhile, tangled in one another, the blanket and the surprising afterglow. Then Aves lifted his head and raised himself up on his elbow so he could look at her.

“Why me?” he asked, as he pressed his free hand to one of hers and twined their fingers together. She accepted his touch and squeezed his hand tightly for a moment but remained silent.

“Why did you choose me? Do I remind you of someone?”

She sighed and brought his fingers to her lips for a moment, contemplating several possible answers, each as true as the next.

“It's like I said. You promised me a good time,” she said, settling on the simplest one, “It's the best offer I've ever had.”

“That's kind of sad”, he responded bluntly.

She dropped his hand.

“So's your story of love being dead for you. Apparently we're sad, broken people.”

He chuckled bitterly, but brushed a lock of hair tenderly off her forehead. She was right. Neither of them had the monopoly on sad lives.

“Tell me about her,” Mara said quietly. She wasn't sure why she wanted to hear the man in bed with her talk about the woman he had loved and lost. Maybe she just needed to hear that love could be real. It was so clear it had been for him.

Aves hesitated.

“She was from my home world,” he said, determined not to get into too much detail. “We grew up together and we were going to grow old together, but there was an attack. And now she doesn't get to grow old with anyone, so why should I?”

Mara nodded, and the look she gave him, that he expected to be one of pity, was instead one of understanding, even admiration.

“You remind me a bit of her,” he continued, running strands of her hair through his fingers. “She had red hair and green eyes like you do, but she was much sweeter than you are.”

“Not so damaged,” Mara murmured and Aves nodded. Denial was pointless.

“I'm sorry she’s gone,” she said, and while the words sounded awkward and strange coming from her, they rang with sincerity.

He kissed her on the forehead, “at least I found her. I loved her.”

Mara nodded again.

“I don't think I'll ever have that,” she whispered and turned away on her side.

He contemplated her for a second and remembered the rawness of her passion and the loneliness she'd fought to hide, possibly even from herself.

“Ah, Jade, you'll get there. You've got it in you. You just hide it well.”

She sucked in a deep breath.

Very well actually, he thought, startled. He realized at that moment that he had caught a glimpse of her vulnerable side before today. He just hadn't recognized it for what it was. There had been a certain monkish war hero involved in triggering it. It would seem the ex Imperial assassin did nothing by halves.

Oh Jade, he thought. Love is not going to be easy for you, is it?

He leaned over and whispered in her ear, “But whoever he is, I'm not going to make it easy for him.”

She glared at him and he could feel her stiffen next to him. She still didn’t quite trust the situation.

“What are you planning to have to do with it?”

He grinned and tugged her towards him, “It's going to be very hard for him to show you a better time than I am.”

With a relieved laugh, she relaxed and let him show her again.

They spent much of the remaining mission in that storage closet, exercising away the tension as they figured out how to be a team. By the time, the ship landed on Coruscant, there was a new rapport between them.

Aves no longer lashed out every time Mara called him on something, and she did her best to break her habit of provoking his short fuse. They still had plenty of heated arguments but they soon became productive debates. They each knew they could trust the other to want the best option to win, for Karrde's sake as well as their own. 

They never had another mission filled with storage room, but the mutual respect they had grudgingly admitted to one another that afternoon became evident to everyone else as well, and contrary to what they had expected, they became friends as well as colleagues.

Between Aves' new command, and Mara's foray into business for herself, they hadn't seen each other in awhile when he appeared at the very end of the reception line at Mara’s wedding. He was accompanied by a green-eyed woman whose ropes of grey hair showed evidence of having been red.

He introduced her as Nasma.

“Congratulations, Jade”, he said. “I see you've found someone to grow old with, and not a minute too soon.”

“So have you, I see,” she said smartly, her eyes twinkling with a new happiness.

“Nah, look at me,” he said, “Hair gone grey, face full of wrinkles. I'm old. No growing left to do.”

Mara opened her mouth to differ but the look in his eyes silenced her.

“I kept my promise,” he continued quietly, “and Naz is more than I ever thought life had left to offer me now.”

Mara felt tears prick at her eyes as her smile widened. She knew exactly what he meant.

“Congratulations,” she said and kissed his cheek.

“And you said I didn't remind you of anyone,” he whispered in her ear, tone sly.

The import of his words hit her and left her mouth hanging open as he winked a blue eye at her and walked away grinning.

“No strings attached, Jade,” he called back over his shoulder. His arm comfortably around Nasma.

Mara felt Luke's arms slide around her waist as he touched his left temple to her right.

“Sounds like there's a story there,” he murmured.

“There is,” she replied, turning around to face him and wrapping her arms around his neck, “but I don't feel like telling it right now.”

“Why is that,” Luke asked, face close to hers.

“Because it involves Aves being right.

**Author's Note:**

> This story draws from Aves' portrayal in the Thrawn Trilogy and the very brief Wookiepedia article that doesn’t say much really, just that he used to be a pilot and eventually gets his own command. The rest is a figment of my imagination. There is a picture of him though. You may wish to check it out and see if you see what I see.


End file.
